Aids: Symptoms and ways of transmitting

Symptoms

The main characteristics of HIV virus are not present from the beginning, they start to get noticed after 5 to 10 years after the virus gets in the body. When a person is infected with HIV, the virus multiplies and spreads rapidly. It can not be detected in the blood. The person infected with the virus may not show any form of illness in the early phase, but in some cases there are symptoms similar to flue, such as runny nose and fever, skin rash and frequent headache. This symptoms will be often be blamed on a cold or flu epidemic.
This symptoms and the high levels of the HIV virus in the body disappear usually after a couple of weeks, when the infected person feels good again. The virus is present but inactive. Without knowing, the person carrying the virus may transmit HIV to others. After some time, probably after some years, the HIV virus is reactivating and starting to multiply again. This is the moment when the Aids appears. Some symptoms that usually occur are white or grey coloured patches on your tongue, or white sores on the length of the tongue. In this stage of the illness the imune system starts to fight back, but the level of white cells from the blood is dropping.
In some cases gradually but in most cases after 2 or 3 weeks other illnesses are starting to develop due to the lack of white blood cells. They can be infections of skin or mucous membrane. Some infections may become deadly to the body, infections that lead to diseases like pneumonia or tuberculosis, or infections that attack the brain, diseases like meningitis or encephalitis. These diseases may cause grave mental problems. Other disease that may occur in the late stages of aids are: diverse forms of cancer, that cause grave wounds to the skin. From this stage, the Aids victim enters the last stage of the disease, because all the effects of the illness mentioned above overwhelms his body, and leads to death.

Ways of transmitting

In comparison with over viruses, HIV can be transmitted rather hard. It can not survive outside a body, away from the warmth and the liquids, and so, it can not be found in the air. This means that people can’t be infected by breathing near a person infected with HIV. In normal conditions, HIV can’t be contracted by cough, sneeze, insects like flies or mosquitos, or by using towels, dishes or other objects that had been in contact with a HIV infected person. HIV can be transmitted in 3 main ways, everyone of these ways implying exchange of body liquids or blood. People can get the virus when the blood, or other body liquid (sperm, for example) of someone infected with HIV enters in contact with their own blood or body liquids inside their bodies.
A way of transmitting the HIV virus is by sexual intercourse. This includes both heterosexual and homosexual acts. The virus is transmitted from a partner to the other by exchanging body fluids.
The second way of transmitting HIV is transplacentar, from the mother to the unborn fetus. The virus is infecting the child even before it gets born, when his evolving in the uterus.
The third way of contracting HIV is through the blood or body liquids, usually by injecting blood before it gets tested for HIV. Some persons have donated blood not knowing that they are infected with HIV. Injecting infected blood to pacients resulted the infection of sane persons with the deadly virus.

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